Decriminalisation is (generally) a stepping stone towards legalisation.

Decriminalisation of drugs might mean that if you are caught with a drug, you might be fined some amount of money relating to how much you have on your person. But you won't be convicted or go to jail for it.

Or it might mean that it's decriminalised only for personal use, but supplying drugs could still be illegal. This might mean that having in your possession a small amount of drugs means you get fined, but a large amount could still send you to jail. They already have convictions around "possessing drugs for supply" that is largely based on the quantity you are found with.

Decriminalisation would usually not imply a state-sponsored legal system of drug distribution and taxation, that would normally be legalisation.

Part of decriminalisation is that it removes a lot of stigma from drugs, and it allows people who have drug addictions a better environment in which to seek help. Decriminalising some drugs, while keeping others criminalised, can lead to substitution of the illegal drugs for those that have lesser penalties. So for the really destructive and socially corrosive drugs, keeping them illegal may make sense, but decriminalising others generally will reduce the usage of those drugs that are still illegal, thus reducing demand and the havoc they cause in society.

Basically America wastes a huge amount of money on the war on drugs when most of what it achieves is misery (and employment for cops / DEA / lawyers / prison guards etc - which are not value-adding productive forms of employment in an economy).

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/06/economist-explains-10

You seem to be missing the point all anti-gun people make here, and it's a QUANTATIVE point about minimising casualties. How many mass knifings do you know about? There's a reason you hear about mass shootings far more than mass knifings - because a gun is simply the superior weapon in practically every respect. The range, the skill required to use it effectively, the physical damage a bullet does to flesh versus a knife. Every respect. Let's look at this 80 people dead number. Compare it to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Kunming_attack

Maybe you will have more luck finding an example with a better parity to the Nice event than I did. Here we have 8 people wielding knives killing 29 people and leaving 140 injured. Compare that to ONE man killing 80 people and leaving hundreds injured (I don't know the precise number). I mean, we really shouldn't even need to start using stats for this. Prima facie it should be clear that a gun is a far more superior weapon than a knife. I don't even know why you'd try to argue this point, it only shows how entrenched your own views are.

You're including yourself in that, right? You also seem just as unwilling to change your view and stance. I wish you wouldn't speak for everyone like that. Me personally I consider my own views on this issue kinda mixed. I'd like to, in my country of Australia, go down to the range and fire some high powered automatic weapons recreationally. That's a right that has been taken away in my country, and I don't like that. But I also am very glad that in our country random people on the street aren't walking around with high powered weapons, and we aren't having a mass shooting every month.

You realise you're advocating the exact opposite of innocent until proven guilty, right? That's why they're called a SUSPECT. I'm sure it's all well and good to say these things when it's not you. Cops shouldn't be able to gun down people with impunity. That's why we have a justice system. You're basically arguing for the police officer to be judge, jury and executioner.

Maybe I missed this elsewhere but do you have a source on this??



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution

I'm no expert on American law but it seems to me that the right to bear arms is itself an amendment to this sacred immutable constitution of yours. So if you can make an amendment on the right to bear arms surely you can make another amendment taking that right away???

Post has been edited 4 time(s), last time on Jul 16 2016, 5:18 am by Oh_Man.

Focusing on mass killings with guns, as I posted before, is really missing the forest for the trees.

Of the 33,000 gun-deaths in America each year, about 2/3rd of them are suicide by gun. Using a gun is the 3rd most common suicide method, but it has the most deaths out of any suicide method, precisely because guns are so fatal and so simple. Poisonings, hangings and exsanguination often don't work to plan (because people generally don't really want to commit suicide), and are often interrupted while the victim can be saved and treated in hospital. But gunshots to the head tend to be fatal, and much less error-prone.

Saying "oh well people would just commit suicide anyway by some other means", the corollary of "oh well criminals would just use knives or bombs instead if they couldn't get guns", is not borne out by the facts.

It's quite easy to 'snap', go and grab your gun, put it in your mouth and kill yourself, in a space of less than a minute. Overdosing, hanging or cutting wrists takes more preparation, hurts more and gives you plenty of time to change your mind and back out of it.

The majority of people who attempt suicide and fail, once they've received treatment, are very glad that they didn't succeed.

Well Lanth maybe this is a topic for another thread. Like, what exactly is inherently wrong about suicide that it should be factoring into this gun rights debate. I mean talking about rights again I do think each and every person on this planet should have the right to end their own life (see really this is going into a euthanasia-type argument now). In fact it's not even really something that can ever be enforced, I don't think. Someone who is determined to end their own life can do so regardless of anyone else's thoughts on the matter.

Why is it actually a bad thing that people who want to end their life have an easy means to do so via a gun?

Committing suicide is a selfish act that hurts a lot of people, and as I've just said, most (nearly all?) people who attempt suicide and fail, later go on to say they're glad they hadn't.

Mentioned it in shoutbox, there is certainly a precedent for repealing amendments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-first_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution. The constitution's integrity has already been marred - not only on this count but on matters of due process, free speech, illegal wars, and so fourth - as well. Not saying we should or need to trample on it more (though jumping to another topic, I favor rewriting it every 10 years or so).

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 16 2016, 10:55 am by jjf28.

The whole concept of having an unchanging law in the first place is retarded. Laws change to fit the society they're in.

You think in 400, 4000, 40,000 years time laws from ancient times will all still be relevant? Laws can and should change.

I don't get why Americans have this big thing with the constitution. As far as I'm aware it's unique to American culture too, I never hear such things in other countries. Only other thing that comes to mind is the Magna Carta.

Ironic for an Australian to be questioning the US constitution, when Australia's own constitution was modelled after the United States'.

Really? I figured it would be modeled off the UK like everything else.

The UK doesn't have a written constitution. Nor does New Zealand.

Fair dinkum.

We do have laws that change over time.
But the constitution's laws are like super laws. "God given" laws that don't change with whatever is cool or hip for the time. We made Freedom of speech one of these untouchable laws because, hey guess what it's NEVER a good idea to outlaw someone from speaking their opinion. It was true 4000 years ago, and it will be true 4000 years from now.

18th and 21st brah, not all of the amendments - not even those on the bill of rights - are so universally accepted as freedom of speech.

So people didn't deserve freedom of speech 4000 years ago? because that's what I was saying. Not when the US adopted it. And the the US imperfectly implementing it doesn't negate this either.

Humans do apparently evolve in short time frames, but any decent set of laws ought to last 10,000 years. Anything that doesn't must've been politics.